WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration is weighing possible stakes in defense companies and others it does business with, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday in defending President Donald Trump&#8217;s push for a greater federal government role in American businesses.
&#8220;They&#8217;re thinking about it,&#8221; Lutnick told CNBC, citing Pentagon leaders, when asked if the administration was considering taking pieces of contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co or Palantir Technologies Inc . &#8220;There&#8217;s a lot of talking that needs to be had about how do we finance our munitions acquisitions.&#8221;
&#8220;There&#8217;s a monstrous discussion about defense. Lockheed Martin makes 97% of their revenue from the U.S. government. They are basically an arm of the U.S. government,&#8221; he added.
Boeing declined to comment, and representatives from Lockheed and Palantir did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following Lutnick&#8217;s comments, shares of Lockheed were up 1.1%, while Boeing was up about 0.7% and Palantir was down about 1%.
On Monday, Trump said he wants to make more U.S. government investments in healthy American companies even as critics warn that such a role for the government could limit corporate strategy and market agility and questions are raised about the impact on consumers.
The Trump administration last week announced a near-10% stake in chipmaker Intel. It previously intervened to complete the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japan&#8217;s Nippon Steel in June, taking what Trump called a &#8220;golden share&#8221; that gives Washington say over its operations.
It also took a stake in rare earths company MP Materials, and brokered a deal with chipmakers Nvidia and AMD to take 15% of revenue from sales to China of chips that had previously been prohibited.
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The unusual level of federal government intervention in the economy has created unexpected alliances, with liberal U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders backing the stake in Intel.
Lutnick on Tuesday said companies that need federal assistance should be prepared to deal with Trump.
&#8220;If a company comes to the United States of America government and says: we need your help, we want to change everything&#8230; I think that&#8217;s a question between the CEO and the president of the United States of whether he will listen to them and change the rules,&#8221; he told CNBC, citing the Nvidia deal.
&#8220;If we are adding fundamental value to your business, I think it&#8217;s fair for Donald Trump to think about the American people,&#8221; Lutnick added.
(Reporting by Susan Heavey; additional reporting by Mike Stone in Washington and Nathan Gomes in Bengaluru; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Andrea Ricci and Nick Zieminski)

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Trump Admin May Buy The Government A Stake In Top Defense Companies

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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he wanted to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this year and that he was open to further trade talks with South Korea even as he lobbed new criticisms at the visiting Asian ally.
&#8220;I&#8217;d like to meet him this year,&#8221; Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he welcomed South Korea&#8217;s new president, Lee Jae Myung, to the White House. &#8220;I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.&#8221;
Despite clinching a trade deal in July that spared South Korean exports harsher U.S. tariffs, the two sides continue to wrangle over nuclear energy, military spending, and details of a deal that included $350 billion in promised South Korean investments in the United States.
After meeting with Trump, Lee attended a business forum with senior U.S. administration officials and CEOs of South Korean companies and more than 20 U.S. firms, including the Carlyle Group, Nvidia, Boeing, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, and General Motors.
Sources told Reuters South Korea&#8217;s flag carrier, Korean Air, was expected to announce an order for about 100 Boeing aircraft.
North Korea did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump&#8217;s remarks.
Since Trump&#8217;s January inauguration, Kim has ignored Trump&#8217;s repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office, which produced no deal to halt North Korea&#8217;s nuclear program.
North Korea&#8217;s rhetoric has ramped up, with Kim pledging to speed his nuclear program and condemning joint U.S.-South Korea military drills. Over the weekend, Kim supervised the test firing of new air defense systems.
In the Oval Office, Lee avoided the theatrical confrontations that dominated a February visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a May visit from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Lee, deploying a well-worn strategy by Trump&#8217;s foreign visitors, talked golf and lavished praise on the Republican president&#8217;s interior decorating and peacemaking. He told reporters earlier that he had read the president&#8217;s 1987 memoir, &#8220;Trump: The Art of the Deal,&#8221; to prepare.
The liberal South Korean encouraged Trump to engage with North Korea.
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&#8220;I hope you can bring peace to the Korean Peninsula, the only divided nation in the world, so that you can meet with Kim Jong Un, build a Trump World (real-estate complex) in North Korea so that I can play golf there, and so that you can truly play a role as a world-historical peacemaker,&#8221; Lee said, speaking in Korean.
South Korea&#8217;s economy relies heavily on the U.S., with Washington underwriting its security with troops and nuclear deterrence. Trump has called Seoul a &#8220;money machine&#8221; that takes advantage of American military protection.
Trump has been pressing Seoul on the trade deal they already reached and on issues related to the bilateral military alliance.
After meeting with Lee, Trump told reporters: &#8220;I think we have a deal done&#8221; on trade. &#8220;They had some problems with it, but we stuck to our guns &#8230; They&#8217;re gonna make the deal that they agreed to make.&#8221; He did not elaborate, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump said while sitting with Lee he would raise &#8220;intel&#8221; he had received about South Korean investigations he said targeted churches and a military base. The White House did not respond to a request for more information.
This month, Seoul police raided Sarang Jeil Church, headed by evangelical preacher Jun Kwang-hoon, who led protests backing Lee&#8217;s ousted predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol.
In July, prosecutors investigating Yoon&#8217;s attempt to declare martial law served a search warrant on the Korean part of a military base jointly operated with the United States. South Korean officials have said U.S. troops and materials were not subject to the search.
South Korea&#8217;s far-right movement, especially evangelical Christians and Yoon supporters, sees him as a victim of communist persecution.
Trump was expected to pressure Lee to commit to more defense spending, including toward upkeep of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea.
Asked if he would reduce those numbers to give the U.S. more regional flexibility, Trump said: &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to say that now,&#8221; but that maybe Seoul should give the U.S. ownership of the &#8220;land where we have the big fort,&#8221; an apparent reference to Camp Humphreys, a U.S. Army garrison in South Korea.
Before the meeting, Lee told reporters it would be difficult for Seoul to accept U.S. demands to adopt such &#8220;flexibility&#8221; &#8211; a reference to using U.S. forces for a wider range of operations, including China-related threats.
Lee wants to chart a balanced path of cooperation with the U.S., while avoiding antagonizing China, Seoul&#8217;s top trade partner. Even as he headed to Washington, he sent a special delegation to Beijing, which delivered a message calling for normalized ties.
Lee will highlight some of South Korea&#8217;s expected U.S. investments when he visits a shipyard in Philadelphia owned by the country&#8217;s Hanwha Group on Tuesday.
Trump is expected to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea on October 30-November 1.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom, Idrees Ali, Steve Holland, Trevor Hunnicutt and David Shepardson in Washington and Josh Smith, Hyun Joo Jin, Ju-min Park and Jack Kim in Seoul; Writing by Josh Smith and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Ed Davies, Michael Perry, Rod Nickel)

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Trump Wants To Meet North Korea’s Kim This Year, He Tells South Korea

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday reported the first human case in the United States of travel-associated New World screwworm, a flesh-eating parasite, from an outbreak-affected country.
The case, investigated by the Maryland Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was confirmed by the CDC as New World screwworm on August 4, and involved a patient who returned from travel to El Salvador, HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon said in an email to Reuters.
Earlier, Reuters reported that beef industry sources said last week that the CDC had confirmed a case of New World screwworm in a person in Maryland who had traveled to the United States from Guatemala.
Nixon did not address the discrepancy on the source of the human case.
&#8220;The risk to public health in the United States from this introduction is very low,&#8221; he said.
The U.S. government has not confirmed any cases in animals this year.
The differing accounts from the U.S. government and industry sources on the human case are likely to further rattle an industry of cattle ranchers, beef producers, and livestock traders already on high alert for potential U.S. infestations as screwworm has moved northward from Central America and southern Mexico.
The government&#8217;s confirmation of a screwworm case comes just over a week after U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins traveled to Texas to announce plans to build a sterile fly facility there as part of efforts to combat the pest.
The USDA has estimated a screwworm outbreak could cost the economy in Texas, the biggest U.S. cattle-producing state, about $1.8 billion in livestock deaths, labor costs, and medication expenses.
An executive of the industry group Beef Alliance sent emails last week to about two dozen people in the livestock and beef sectors, informing them that the CDC had confirmed a human case of screwworm in Maryland in a person who had traveled to the U.S. from Guatemala, according to a source, who asked not to be identified, and who shared the contents of the emails with Reuters.
Beth Thompson, South Dakota&#8217;s state veterinarian, told Reuters on Sunday that she was notified of a human case in Maryland within the last week by a person with direct knowledge of it. CDC deferred questions to Maryland on a call with state animal health officials, Thompson said. “We found out via other routes and then had to go to CDC to tell us what was going on,” she said. “They weren’t forthcoming at all. They turned it back over to the state to confirm anything that had happened or what had been found in this traveler.”
Another source said that state veterinarians had learned about a human case in Maryland during a call last week with the CDC. A Maryland state government official also confirmed a case.
A spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Health did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Screwworms are parasitic flies whose females lay eggs in wounds on any warm-blooded animal. Once the eggs hatch, hundreds of screwworm larvae use their sharp mouths to burrow through living flesh, eventually killing their host if left untreated.
The maggots&#8217; feeding is similar to a screw being driven into wood, giving the pests their name.
Screwworms can be devastating in cattle and wildlife, and rarely infest humans, though an infestation in either an animal or a person can be fatal.
Treatment is onerous, and involves removing hundreds of larvae and thoroughly disinfecting wounds. But infestations are typically survivable if treated early enough.
The emails from the Beef Alliance executive said that, due to patient privacy laws, there were no other details available about the positive human case of screwworm. The person was treated, and prevention measures were implemented in the state, the email said.
A livestock economist at Texas A&amp;M University was asked to prepare a report for Rollins on the impacts to industry of the border closure to Mexican cattle, according to the emails, a measure that has largely been in effect since November to prevent the arrival of screwworm to the United States.
The CDC was required to report the positive New World screwworm case to both Maryland health officials and the Maryland state veterinarian, one of the emails said, adding that the CDC also notified other agriculture stakeholders.
&#8220;We remain hopeful that, since awareness is currently limited to industry representatives and state veterinarians, the likelihood of a positive case being leaked is low, minimizing market impact,&#8221; the beef industry executive wrote.
A representative for the Beef Alliance did not respond to requests for comment.
Livestock traders and beef producers have been on edge about the potential for cases in cattle as prices have already hit record highs because the U.S. cattle herd is at its smallest size in seven decades.
A human case and the lack of transparency around it could present a political challenge for Rollins. The USDA has set traps and sent mounted officers along the border, but it has faced criticism from some cattle producers and market analysts for not acting faster to pursue increased fly production.
Rollins first announced plans for a sterile fly facility at Moore Air Force Base in Edinburg, Texas &#8211; near where a production facility to combat screwworm operated during the last major outbreak 50 years ago &#8211; in June, saying that the facility would take two to three years to come online. A spokesperson for the USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mexico has also taken efforts to limit the spread of the pest, which can kill livestock within weeks if not treated. The Mexican government said in July that it started to build a $51 million sterile fly production facility in the country&#8217;s south.
The sole operating plant is in Panama City and can produce a maximum of 100 million sterile screwworm flies each week. The USDA has estimated that 500 million flies would need to be released weekly to push the fly back to the Darien Gap, the stretch of rainforest between Panama and Colombia.
Screwworms have been traveling north through Mexico from Central America since 2023. They are endemic in Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and countries in South America, according to the USDA.
Mexico reported a new case about 370 miles (595 km) south of the U.S. border in Ixhuatlan de Madero, Veracruz, in July. The USDA immediately ordered the closure of livestock trade through southern ports of entry, after previously halting imports in November and May.
The U.S. typically imports over a million cattle from Mexico a year to fatten in feedlots and process into beef.
Screwworms were eradicated from the United States in the 1960s when researchers began releasing massive numbers of sterilized male screwworm flies that mate with wild female screwworms to produce infertile eggs.
(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison in Buenos Aires, Tom Polansek in Chicago and Leah Douglas in Washington. Additional reporting by Heather Schlitz in Chicago and Jarrett Renshaw in Washington. Editing by Emily Schmall, Diane Craft and Sonali Paul)

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U.S. Confirms Nation’s First Travel-Associated Human Screwworm Case

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Former Mexican drug kingpin Ismael &#8220;El Mayo&#8221; Zambada pleaded guilty on Monday to U.S. charges related to his decades-long leadership of the violent Sinaloa cartel and its role in flooding the U.S. with drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl.
Zambada, the alleged co-founder of Mexico&#8217;s Sinaloa cartel, pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to charges that he engaged in a racketeering conspiracy and ran a continuing criminal enterprise that prosecutors said was responsible for importing and distributing massive quantities of drugs.
Those charges stemmed from his decades-long role leading the Sinaloa cartel alongside imprisoned drug lord Joaquin &#8220;El Chapo&#8221; Guzman, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Colorado.
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He agreed to plead guilty after the Justice Department this month said it would not seek the death penalty for Zambada or Rafael Caro Quintero, another septuagenarian alleged Mexican drug lord facing U.S. charges.
Zambada was arrested in July 2024 alongside Joaquin Guzman Lopez, one of Guzman&#8217;s sons, after the plane in which they were traveling landed at a small airstrip in New Mexico.
Zambada&#8217;s lawyer has said Guzman Lopez kidnapped Zambada, which the Guzman family lawyer has denied.
Guzman Lopez has pleaded not guilty to U.S. drug trafficking charges. U.S. prosecutors have said they would not seek the death penalty for him if convicted.
Mexico this month sent more than two dozen suspected cartel members to the U.S., amid rising pressure from President Donald Trump on Mexico to dismantle the country&#8217;s powerful drug organizations. Mexico has said it received assurances from the Justice Department that it would not seek the death penalty for them.
The charges Zambada pleaded guilty to were contained in two separate indictments the U.S. Justice Department had secured against him, one in New York and another in Texas. The Texas case was recently transferred to New York ahead of the guilty plea.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Nate Raymond in BostonEditing by Rod Nickel)

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Cartel Leader ‘El Mayo’ Zambada Pleads Guilty To U.S. Charges

(Reuters) -Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI sued Apple and ChatGPT maker OpenAI in U.S. federal court in Texas on Monday, accusing them of illegally conspiring to thwart competition for artificial intelligence.
Apple and OpenAI have &#8220;locked up markets to maintain their monopolies and prevent innovators like X and xAI from competing,&#8221; the lawsuit said.
Apple’s partnership with OpenAI has integrated its AI platform ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads, and Macs.
&#8220;If not for its exclusive deal with OpenAI, Apple would have no reason to refrain from more prominently featuring the X app and the Grok app in its App Store,&#8221; the lawsuit said.
In the lawsuit, xAI said it is seeking billions of dollars in alleged damages.
“This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment,&#8221; an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk had threatened to sue Cupertino, California-based Apple earlier this month, saying in a post on his social media platform X that Apple&#8217;s behavior &#8220;makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store.”
OpenAI&#8217;s ChatGPT became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in the months following its launch in late 2022.
Musk&#8217;s xAI acquired X in March for $33 billion to enhance its chatbot training capabilities. Musk has also integrated the Grok chatbot into vehicles made by his electric automobile company Tesla.
Musk&#8217;s xAI was launched less than two years ago and competes with Microsoft-backed OpenAI as well as with Chinese startup DeepSeek.
Musk is separately suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in federal court in California to stop its conversion from a nonprofit to a for-profit business. Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit.
Apple’s App Store practices have been the focus of multiple lawsuits. In one ongoing case by “Fortnite” video game maker Epic Games, a judge ordered Apple to allow greater competition for app payment options.
(Reporting by Mike Scarcella; Editing by David Bario, David Gregorio, Rod Nickel)

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Elon Musk Hits Apple, OpenAI With Lawsuit On AI Competition, App Store Rankings

The Trump administration plans to make available about 20 metric tons of Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads to U.S. power companies as a potential fuel for reactors, according to a source familiar with the matter and a draft memo outlining the plan.
Plutonium has previously only been converted to fuel for commercial U.S. reactors in short-lived tests. The plan would follow through on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in May ordering the government to halt much of its existing program to dilute and dispose of surplus plutonium, and instead provide it as a fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.
The Department of Energy, or DOE, plans to announce in coming days it will seek proposals from industry, said the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The source cautioned that because the plan is still a draft, its final details could change pending further discussions.
The plutonium would be offered to industry at little to no cost &#8212; with a catch. Industry will be responsible for costs of transportation, designing, building, and decommissioning DOE-authorized facilities to recycle, process and manufacture the fuel, the memo said.
The details on the volume of the plutonium, industry&#8217;s responsibilities in the plan and the potential timing of a U.S. announcement, have not been previously reported. The 20 metric tons would be drawn from a larger, 34-metric-ton stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium that the United States had previously committed to dispose of under a non-proliferation agreement with Russia in 2000.
The Department of Energy did not confirm or deny the Reuters reporting, saying only that the department is &#8220;evaluating a variety of strategies to build and strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel, including plutonium,&#8221; as directed by Trump&#8217;s orders.
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Boosting the U.S. power industry is a policy priority for the Trump administration as U.S. electricity demand rises for the first time in two decades on the boom in data centers needed for artificial intelligence.
The idea of using surplus plutonium for fuel has raised concerns among nuclear safety experts who argue a previous similar effort failed.
Under the 2000 agreement, the plutonium was initially planned to be converted to mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, to run in nuclear power plants. But in 2018, the first Trump administration killed the contract for a MOX project that it said would have cost more than $50 billion.
The U.S. Energy Department holds surplus plutonium at heavily guarded weapons facilities including Savannah River in South Carolina, Pantex in Texas, and Los Alamos in New Mexico. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years and must be handled with protective gear.
Until Trump&#8217;s May order, the U.S. program to dispose of the plutonium has involved blending it with an inert material and storing it in an experimental underground storage site called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The Energy Department has estimated that burying the plutonium would cost $20 billion.
&#8220;Trying to convert this material into reactor fuel is insanity. It would entail trying to repeat the disastrous MOX fuel program and hoping for a different result,&#8221; said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
&#8220;The excess plutonium is a dangerous waste product and DOE should stick to the safer, more secure and far cheaper plan to dilute and directly dispose of it in WIPP.&#8221;
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Lisa Shumaker)

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Trump Plans To Make Cold War-Era Plutonium Available For Nuclear Power

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Trump Admin May Buy The Government A Stake In Top Defense Companies

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